Battling a Virus and Disbelief

But he continued to resist treatment, initially refusing to take medicine or give blood samples, and threatened to attack the nurses with his fork. Finally, doctors reached a deal with family members, allowing them to invite a witch doctor to the hospital in return for blood specimens from Jones Ginting.

Agenda Purba, a witch doctor from Jandi Meriah, traveled six hours by van to the hospital. It was midnight by the time he started the ceremony in the special bird flu ward, he said.

Purba chanted over 21 betel nut leaves, each about the size of his calloused palm and filled with blossoms, a pasty white lime, brown chunks of an astringent and bits of an orange-colored nut. He prayed for the young man's recovery. Then Purba lifted the first of the leaves to his lips. He chewed, puckered and softly spit onto Jones's forehead. Bending over the patient, he gently blew the slime over the flesh. The witch doctor lifted the second leaf, chewed it and spit it onto Jones Ginting's chest, repeating the process. He continued until he had finished the leaves, slathering the torso, arms, legs, hands and feet, alternating between left side and right, making sure to cover all the joints.

None of the staff at the hospital ever cautioned Purba that he might be exposing himself to a killer disease, he said. No one suggested he take Tamiflu. No one sampled his blood or monitored his health. But had they tried, Purba said, he would have considered it silly.

"I'm the one to save Jones," he said. He grinned, baring a mouthful of teeth stained black by decades of betel nut. "There will be no more casualties. Seven is enough. I drew a border around them at the hospital." Purba stood up to demonstrate and etched a line in the dirt with the tip of his flip-flop. "It stops here," he said, "because I protected the family with my magic line."

A Turn for the Worse

When Dowes Ginting developed a fever and began coughing, he fled in search of a witch doctor, just as his younger brother had done a week before.

In the home of another medicine man in Jandi Meriah, Suherman Bangun mumbled the unintelligible words of an incantation over Dowes, recalled the healer's wife and Dowes's relatives, who had helped him while he was in hiding from the health inspectors. The witch doctor doused Dowes with cooking oil and massaged his aching muscles. He put a hefty chunk of betel nut in the corner of his own mouth and chewed, his lips turning red from the juice of the mild narcotic, and then with surgical precision spit the concoction bit by bit over his patient's head, face and chest and along his extremities. To control the surging fever, the healer pounded a bowl of rice laced with galangal ginger, applying the pasty preparation called beras kencur to the man's sweaty flesh.

After three days, Indonesian and international health investigators tracked the sick man to the village and urged his family to take him to a hospital. The relatives demurred: They said he required two more days of traditional treatment.

That night, Dowes took an abrupt turn for the worse. The medicine man repeated his treatment several times in the night.

Shortly before dawn, Dowes rose to use the bathroom. Because there was no toilet there, his uncle helped him walk next door. Dowes could hardly breath. He was staggering, on the brink of collapse. His uncle lugged him to his Suzuki SUV parked out front and set off for the district hospital. Before they made it, Dowes had died.

Special correspondent Yayu Yuniar contributed to this report.